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Wednesday, December 30, 2009

lAnother day to go before the end of the year. Gonna spent the start of the year at 2 reservoirs. At around 2 am in Bedok Reservoir and thereafter sometime in the morning at MacRitchie supporting Wonder Woman in her quest to raise funds for the needy.

A rather meaningful way to start the year I suppose. So far, according to the latest update from the blog, nearly $20,000.00 has been raised. Not bad considering that the publicity was limited and started very late. However, this is still far off the target of $50,000.00.

So friends, why not start 2010 on a feel good mood and pledge your support for this worthy event. And if you and your family are free, come down to MacRitchie on Friday to witness this extraordinary lady doing her wee little bit.

Monday, December 28, 2009

What a horrible long week end it turned out to be. Instead of enjoying the super long weekend and the holidays, ended up cooped at home the weekend down with a bout of food poisoning. Even had to forgo the show Avatar which I wanted to see and managed to persuade the Princess and wifey to go along. In the end, they went and all I got was lousy reruns of X-men, Batman, Superman on cable.

Thursday, December 24, 2009

It's the holidays season and what is a holiday without a holiday? (Did I just said that?

Anyway, did one of those stupid crazy idiotic tourisy thing i.e. signed up for a package tour of Taiwan. And so we went on a whirlwind tour of Taiwan in 7 days. 7 different hotels, 7 days of butt freezing bus ride and exorbitant tourist cheating sights and buys and I enjoyed it! Actually didn't really enjoyed it but after paying so much for it, got to pretend to enjoy otherwise very 心痛.

Here are the highlights and lowlights(sic)

Day 1. Stayed in Taoyuan but went to the night market at Shihlin. The bladdy guide only gave us 2 hours for dinner + shopping there. Where got enough?

Day 2. Woke up at an ugodly hour to take the bullet train to Taipei. What so special about the bullet train? I really don't know. From there went to this place Hualien to look at some rocks and then went all the way to the top of a mountain in freezing weather and pouring rain to eat and shop at a row of restored houses selling tourisy stuff. What a rip off! But this was forgiven when we saw what our hotel toilet came with; a Hansgrohe lookalike vertical shower!

Day 3. Still raining as we continued to moved in a clockwise direction to Chihpen. Was impressed with the gorges of Taroko. Very nice place if not for the cold.

Some friends did a marathon there recently. How did they run up the mountain? Along the way, witnessed the devastation caused by typhoon Morokot on 8 August this year. All of us on the bus were stunned by the extent of the damages, something which we have only previously seen in movies.

Got conned into buying Linzhi. Hopefully it is the real thing. Ended the day at a hotel which comes with a free hot spring session. But after watching the hordes of mainland Chinese descending on it, decided to pay and use the spa's hot spring instead.

Day 4. Another early morning and we are off to Kaoshiong where it was temple, temple, temple and more temple. Highlight of the day?

At around 9pm, while in the hotel, experienced first hand an earthquake! In Singapore, the most tremors I had felt in the office were from the Indonesian quakes and it was just some slight vibration but this was different. There we were watching TV when suddenly the door started to rattle. I thought somebody was knocking and then the TV started to jump and all hell broke out. Earthquake! We grabbed our passports and rushed down only to see the bellhop calmly holding the lifts for yet another batch of mainland Chinese. Er what earthquake? To my question whether it was safe, he smiled and said this thing happens, maybe 4 - 5 times a year so no problem! It was only later that we found out that an earthquake measuring 6.8 had occured in Hualien which we were there only 2 nights ago. And by the time the earthquake tremor reached Kaoshiong, it was only about 4. Okay cheap trill but we were safe and what a priceless experience.

Day 5: Enroute to Taichung got another stop for us to be fleeced (this time royal jelly) before going on to the famous Sun Moon lake. Unfortunately, although the rain had sopped after 4 days of continuous rainfall, it was still foggy (misty?) and we really couldn't see much of the so called 9 Mountains surrounding it.

Day 6. Back to Taipei. Another rip off - some feng shui mumbo jumbo. And a lousy hotel room with no English cable channels and a fake window! All the other hotels had up to 100 channels and this one had only 40+ almost all of which local channel. Highlight: Not Ximendin night market which we went but the underground mall where there was one whole lot of shops selling collectibles. Too bad we ran out of time!

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Everybody loves a challenge. I guess in my list of acquaintances and friends, none more so than this lady, Kelly. She among all that I know has ran the most marathon and ultra marathons. 38 in all in the past 8 years!

To kick off 2010, she has decided to take on not 1 but 2 challenges.

1) Challenge no 1 - to run non-stop for 30 hours and to cover 160km in the process

2) Challenge no 2 - to raise $50,000.00 for the President's Challenge.

I really have to salute her (actually if I am in camo, I have no choice ~ she is a Major in the SAF) but it is her mental strength that amazes me. Read more about her races adventure here.

Back to the 2 challenges, on 1 January 2010 at 3am she will start running circles at Bedok Reservoir before running from there to MacRitchie Reservoir where she will continue running the 10.5km trail until she hit 30 hours. She hopes supporters and friends will help her to complete the challenge by donating generously to the President's Challenge either with an outright donation or a pledge of an amount ($1 or more) for every kilometre ran.

Unlike most fund raising projects, all donations received for Click-4-Klick will go directly to the President's Challenge. There will be no deductions of fund raising expenses, admin charges etc. So please donate generously.

For more information on the challenge and how you can make a donation or pledge, click here. For more information on the President's Challenge, click here.

Friday, December 4, 2009

There are all sort of diet plans. In fact, the list is mind boggling. Expensive even weird but most of them not workable. May be it is determination or the lack of it but most time it is because the plans are so troublesome and difficult to adhere to that most weight watchers simply give up halfway.

Like the Cambridge Diet which was personally endorsed by the then CEO of Income, Tan Kin Lian and sold at the Fairprice supermarket. Who in the world can endure such low calorie intake?

Then there are the more famous diet like the Atkins diet which is a low carb high fat diet plan; the Zone diet and the South Beach Diet. While all these seem effective enough with its make sense plan, it is complicated like hell to follow.

Of course, there are easier options like popping pills or taking those appetite suppressing supplements or meal replacement thingy but these come with risk, like the Andrea De Cruz's case.

So why am I rambling away about diet? Do I need one? Possibly if I continue with my current low rate of exercise and high intake of food. Or is it because I looked like a 'bak chiang' when I tried on a tri-top recently?

Nah.. although my weight has indeed been creeping up slowly (from 74 at the beginning of the year to 79 now), it is still no cause for alarm, yet.

But was reading this article in the Reader Digest and there was a feature about Mark Bittman and his Simple till Six plan. Note that I don't use the word diet because there is no diet. It is to put simply a rather sensible eating plan where nothing is forbidden. Now this is what can be a healthy and successful way to loose weight. Try it out if you are planning to lose weight!

NB: I am not paid or have been asked to endorse the Simple till Six plan or any other plan. I am just a kaypoh who busy body who likes to look out for things to share. Also because run out of things to post this week:)